Well, not much stuff has happened...

Let's see, Gentle Readers.  It's 2.28AM.  I went to bed at 9.30PM, pretty tired after a fairly busy day getting organised for a girlie family gathering, where the extremely glamourous purveyor of a well-known brand of skin care products came round to show us her wares, give the two 13-year olds facials and a little bit of make-up (they were so excited!) and sell us lots of (admittedly) lovely products... and then BANG!  I was awake.


Actually, I blame the leftovers I had for dinner.  It was a combination of lamb ribs (yummy) and indian-style osso buco (can you believe that even exists?) and I think it was a bit too much for my poor gut to cope with, so here I am.  I've had a glass of milk with Milo in it to slice through the heartburn, but there's no getting away from the wide-awakedness of it all...


Anyway, you're definitely due an update, Gentle Readers, because my last post was sketchy to say the least.  I was rushing out the door to something, don't ask me what.  Oh yes, School.  Child's chair is definitely finished, but the teacher didn't even look at them until Friday night, so no mark, no bringing home, and therefore no pics.  Sorry.


The upholstered footstool is also almost finished, remind me when I'm running my own upholstery shop to put up a big big sign saying "no velvet, no stripes, no checks".  Big lessons learnt this week about how hard it is up make nice box pleats using velvet...


Anyway, it looks like this:

Except mine is a nice pale blue velvet with a fairly '80's motif rather than that extremely nasty brocade, has five buttons in the top and only one lot of piping.  Here they've used the first row of piping to make the foam block look like two smallish blocks instead of one big one.  Ours really are two blocks, held together and in place by the buttons which are on mattress twine, which is then pulled through both blocks of foam to the underneath, and tied off using a slip knot - the buttoning needles you use to do this are incredibly long and sharp and could kill you:

 Here's a selection of the tools we use everyday.The buttoning needle is the second one from the bottom, and it's 12"/30cm long.  

The bottom tool is called a regulator, and it's also known in our class as 'The Enforcer', 'The Terminator' and 'The Force'. as in "Use the Force, Luke".  It's extremely handy for shoving material into tight spaces if you're wussy about hurting your fingers (oh yes!) on the backs of chairs...

Where was I?  I just fell into an upholstery-tool-lust moment & had to go & look on eBay to see what there was... Anyway, the skirt is made up of piping & a very long piece of material, into which you have to fold pleats that sit right on the corners, and then you have to stitch the pleats.  They're allowed a tolerance (how much it's allowed to be off the corner) of 1mm, or .039".  Yep, .039".  That's not a lot, really.  I had three goes at sewing it together before I got them to sit on the corners to the teacher's satisfaction, then I had to do the skirt & piping, which is why I never want to sew anything with velvet ever again.  My respect for Upholsterers continues to grow...

Anyway, all that's left is to staple it on, back-tack it (this is the process where you take cardboard strips and insert them right under the piping, then drive them into the wood using your staple gun - it stops the piping from falling down when the piece is finished..) and then cover the bottom with calico, and bam!  Upholstered footstool, anybody?  I'll be (hopefully) bringing it home on Monday night, so pics.  Honest.  No, honest.

In other news of unparalleled excitement, the quote for the gutterguard arrived.  No issue with that... but they wanted $4500 to supply & install a water tank which costs $770 in the shops.  I'm pretty sure I can rope Mr Golightly into doing all the work they included in the price, which would take no more than one day to do - even if they were charging $100 an hour for labour, that's only $800, plus $770 for the tank, maybe $1000 for parts (unlikely, it's a tap, some hose, a first flush water divertor to keep all the crap out of the tank [probably no more than $250, according to this site]) and a concrete slab for the tank to stand on, that's $2700.  Where does the other $1800 go?  The staff Christmas party?  I so don't think they'll be getting our order...

And of course I've been having such a lot of fun making Treasuries of vintage clothes on Etsy - if you haven't ever looked into the vintage side of Etsy, it is amazing.  There is everything from hat blocks (I saw a beauty yesterday for $65.00...) to shoe lasts to hats, bags, shoes, jewellery, kitchenware, you name it.  I found a beautiful purple suede Liz Claiborne shopping tote which had had 600 odd views, at least 25 hearts & was an absolute bargain as far as I could see, but nobody had bought it!  Anyway, I couldn't resist, even though it wasn't you-know-what colour (red, Red RED!), so I'll report back when it arrives.

And now, Gentle Readers, I feel like I might be ready to go back to bed.  The Milo has hit the spot, and my eyelids are drooping.  So, Buona Notte!

PS Happy Birthday to the very lovely MIss Vetty!